Law enforcement and non-governmental organizations around the world are constantly planning and conducting operations to catch environmental criminal groups and fugitives involved in environmental crimes (PDF). These crimes may occur at local, regional, national, or transnational levels and include the illegal trade in live animals; illegal trade in wildlife parts and trophies; pollution of air, water, and soil; over-exploitation of fishing grounds; climate change crime and corruption; illegal logging; natural resource theft; and biosecurity.
Decades ago, some 4,000 elephants lived in Gorongosa, an elephant behavior expert and National Geographic Explorer who studies the park’s pachyderms. But those numbers dwindled to triple digits following the civil war. New, as yet unpublished, research she’s compiled indicates that of the 200 known adult females, 51 percent of those that survived the war—animals 25 years or older—are tuskless. And 32 percent of the female elephants born since the war are tuskless.